


Baby, Empires Crumble All The Time

by th_esaurus



Category: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-10-26 21:20:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20748947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/th_esaurus/pseuds/th_esaurus
Summary: How can you possibly be a romantic who doesn't believe in romance?





	Baby, Empires Crumble All The Time

**Author's Note:**

> there is never a time when i'm not in my feelings about bill/jim.

It’s the autumn term of his second year when Jim realises that he is in love with Bill Haydon. He accepts this with his usual upright stoicism; a fact, like his height or eye colour, about which he can do nothing to change. He studies, he plays second row forward for the RFC, he bows his head for prayers over breakfast and dinner. He is in love with Bill. All facts. 

Bill does not believe in love. A chemical reaction in the brain, he once proclaimed grandly, that's only meant to last for a mating season and ensure the procreation of the human race. 

“How can you possibly be a romantic who doesn't believe in romance?” one of their companions had barked at Bill, laughing, and Bill laughed along with them. 

“He’s a polymath,” someone piped up, and eyes were rolled. “A romantic by any other name!” rung out the jeers.

Bill does not believe in God, and does not even mouth his _ amens, _preferring the petty rebellion of smug silence; but this, Jim surmises, does not change the fact that God exists. Bill’s lack of faith in love does not deter his companions from falling in love with him.

Bill often comes to Jim's room, shoos away his roommate - a squirrelly lad called Higgins who takes Bill’s dismissals with purse-lipped resignation - and flops down on Jim’s bed with his arm across his eyes. Jim knows he has just had sex. Probably with a girl to whom he professed a deep primal attraction to in the moment, and then felt repulsed by afterwards. It’s Bill’s way.

“My prick runs away with me,” Bill says mournfully sometimes. 

“You're just adolescent,” Jim shrugs pragmatically.

“How dare you,” Bill mutters, without any heat. 

Jim is a firm believer in regimented sleep, a strict seven hours a night, but he can doze to the sound of Bill’s articulate rambling. He’s no heart to kick Bill out, and so oftentimes he stays all night in Jim’s room, touching Jim’s books and pillows, his fingertips smelling faintly of cunt. 

Bill has been sent ardent love-letters by a history professor - male, as if a professor would be anything other - that he has no interest in. He enjoys the attention, of course. “I shall keep the letters,” he told Jim once, off-handedly, “in case I might use them as blackmail or some such, if the need arises.” Old Fanshawe, the classics master, is dotty for Bill and less subtle about it. Likes to compare Bill’s hyphenate talents to that of the young _ eromenos _ in his ancient texts, rather boldly, in front of a gathered class. 

There is a third professor within the walls of Christchurch, Jim knows, whom Bill once let suck his cock. He did not tell Jim this, and Jim has no idea who it was; Jim merely gleaned this information from campus gossip. He suspects it was purposeful gossip within his earshot to make him jump to Bill's defence - he has heard himself referred to more than once as Haydon’s attack dog - but he had no reason to believe Bill wouldn't let it happen. He has no interesting in defending Bill’s honour against perfectly in-character speculation. In fact, he suspects Bill already feels quite chagrined about it: even if he was the suck_ee_, as it were, he must have been quite taken with the fellow to go through with it. 

His nights with Jim continue, though he complains less about womanly wiles and his temperamental lust. Instead, he brings his love letters for open mockery: a grown man's sordid verse about dreams of Bill's creamy thighs, the arches of his feet, et cetera. “It's decent poetry,” Jim says, reading over his shoulder as they lounge on his bed.

“You can see the sweat marks on the paper,” Bill says distastefully.

“You string him along so.”

“Slander,” Bill chirps. “I’ve never cockteased the man, it's him who’s chasing me.”

“Then put him out of his misery. Fanshawe, too.”

At this, Bill is evasive. “Oh, _ Fan_,” he says, dismissive. “You know he’s harmless.”

“Implying some cravings are harm_ful_?”

Bill looks at him sharply. “Devil’s advocacy doesn’t suit you, Jim.”

He’s not wrong, and Jim looks for safer ground to tread upon. “You're a dog for flattery,” he chides mildly.

“Why on earth shouldn't I be? I rather enjoy their recklessness,” Bill muses. “To hold the proof of perversion in my hands.”

Jim frowns at that, and Bill notices.

“Of course,” he says, “you know I have nothing against the homosexual. it's just—impractical, isn't it? A boyish pastime. I've dabbled,” Bill says, extremely light.

“Have you now.”

“Are you shocked?” Bill goads him. There is some danger in his honesty. 

“No,” Jim says, not rising to it.

“How very modern of you,” Bill bites. He falls into a sulk then, seeing that he can't make the game he wants out of this. They sit in silence for a moment. Bill folds his letter and puts it back in the envelope. Jim nudges a pile of books with his foot.

“Professor Kernsley sucked me off, you know,” Bill says suddenly.

One of the younger ones, Jim thinks. Barely a decade older than they are. “Yes, I know,” he replies.

“_How _ do you know,” Bill snaps.

Jim shrugs. “Gossip. Hearsay. You're not as careful as you think sometimes.”

“I'm not careful at all,” Bill says, still snappy. “Nor do I have any need to be.”

Jim shrugs again, as if to say, _ that's your prerogative. _

“Doesn't it leave a bitter taste in your mouth?” he asks, and Bill, for a split second, looks stunned at his vulgarity before he clarifies “—when you mock them, I mean. Don't you find it hypocritical?”

“It's merely a hobby for me,” Bill says breezily. Even more meaningless than his trysts with girls, Jim thinks dourly: hedonistic pleasure and no risk of procreation. If Bill were unbothered by it all, it would be the perfect pastime.

Jim cannot help but frown again, and Bill’s face contorts in distress at it. “I've put you all out of sorts,” Bill says, unhappily.

“No,” Jim says. “Well, somewhat. You know I hate that sort of deceit.”

“Come now,” Bill needles him. “That's a heavy accusation.” Jim shrugs again. He's tired of chasing Bill in circles now. He loves Bill, but he does find him awfully trying.

“Jim, I won't leave until you aren't mad at me,” Bill says.

“You don't even know why I'm mad,” Jim mutters.

Bill sits up at that, one of his fits of seriousness that overcome him like a kind of muted hysteria. He loathes to be accused of lying when he hasn’t done it for a purpose. He tucks his feet under himself, cross-legged on Jim's bed, and looks too youthful, too earnest. “I do,” he says. “I feel very much that I do.”

“Very much, eh?” Jim huffs a laugh. “Bill, I’m tired and I’d like to sleep. Go away now, I'll see you in the morning, shall I?”

“I cannot possibly leave you in this mood.” There is an edge of desperation in Bill’s voice now.

“And you cannot possibly fix the mood you've put me in,” Jim says irritably.

“Tell me how,” Bill says. “I'm your servant. I shall burn the letter. I shall burn all the letters and never speak of them again.”

“That's—” Jim is offended. “That's not it at all.”

He frowns at Bill very deeply. So very often, he wishes he knew Bill's game, not so much to play along with it as just to understand him better. He’s always a step behind Bill in his company - literary references he struggles to place, foreign names casually dropped, Bill recanting a story as if Jim was there, half formed detail and jokes dependent on context when he knows full well that Jim was not present at the time. And yet that's exactly how Bill likes it to be. Jim is not naive to Bill’s narcissism. 

He loves _ in spite of_, not always _ because_.

“Are you angry because you’re in love with me?”

A crackle of electricity runs through Jim’s entire nervous system. It is very painful, in the same sudden way a stubbed toe feels urgent and agonising, like one is, for a split-second, dying. Jim holds his chest tight, his back bolt upright, so as not to give away his distress. 

“That can hardly be helped,” Bill carries on, whether he’s noticed or not. Bill is sharp and observant in a way that startles Jim sometimes - canny commentary on their peers and professors, small sleights of hand that Jim would never have noticed without Bill’s pointing them out - but he has an equal talent in smothering his keenness. Filing away those intimate tells, just like his dirty letters, for—later use.

_ He’s seen through us all_, Jim thinks bitterly.

“You know that half the campus is in love with me,” Bill is saying, something needy in his blustering tone, “if I discounted every friend who’s professed to love me I’d be a social pariah, Jim. _ Darling _Jim. It’s all just—misplaced chemical reactions, you know as well as I do—”

“Oh, be quiet, Bill,” Jim snaps. “For once in your life.”

“Here, you may kiss me and we’ll still be bosom pals in the morning.”

“I thought you were trying to make me less angry at you.”

But Bill has tuned him out now, that dark self-interest engulfing his eyes. He means to kiss Jim. Here, at two in the morning, on Jim’s bed, at the chilly, golden end of autumn term. 

Jim puts a hand up between them and lays his palm across Bill’s eyes. He’s wanted this for what feels like a very long time, and hasn’t the willpower to put a stop to it; but he would like it best if Bill can’t see his reaction. He can feel the hot exhale of Bill’s breath through his nose, against the underside of Jim’s thumb, almost like an anticipant horse being saddled to ride. 

Their mouths touch very briefly. 

That painful electricity again, focused on his lips. 

Jim suspects Bill thinks of him as an ingenue. He _ has _ kissed, and has never bothered to oblige Bill by giving him that particular ammunition. He supposes he means to say something smart and off-handed about his own hobbies, but as soon as he’s pulling away, Bill follows him. Hands on his jaw, startlingly hungry, his mouth on Jim’s.

“I don’t like to be the subject of your fun,” Jim says harshly, putting his elbow between their chests for some distance, some air. Almost terrified of giving Bill a static shock.

“I swear to god this isn't—” Bill sounds desperately earnest; really just desperate. “Let me, please, I shan't—I won't tell anyone—”

That irks Jim afresh. 

“I've given you your answer,” he says, “now leave me in peace for the night.”

“I'm a poor student,” Bill keens. “Tell me again.”

It's an appalling thing to say. Lurid. It would sound like mockery if Bill didn't look close to tears. He has always prided himself on being so aloof, but Jim knows how these flashes of deeply felt emotion overtake him. Like a crashing wave, where he can only stand upon the shore with Jim at his side and wait until it has drowned them both.

For every trait he dislikes in Bill, there is another that's softer and more generous, waiting to try its luck.

He _ is _in love with Bill. It feels like a terrible weakness, and he has always been a strong lad. Muscular, rigid. Not easily toppled. That’s old Prideaux.

“—All right,” Jim murmurs, powerless. 


End file.
